


Perhaps There is Only Abyss

by kasiapeia



Series: Nothing Can Break Me Except Your Absence [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, I love Anders but I do not always like him if you get what I mean, Mentions of alcoholism, Post DA2 but pre-DAI, Spoilers for DA2, Yes the woman Anders speaks of is Cousland and her quest to cure the Taint, this has been sitting in my writing folder for almost half a year so here you go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 11:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18690940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasiapeia/pseuds/kasiapeia
Summary: After what happened in Kirkwall, Hawke doesn't think of herself as a hero, even if others insist otherwise. A hero wouldn't have done all that she had done, even if it was necessary. Plagued by guilt, Hawke wanders.She didn't expect to run into a painfully familiar face belonging to a man she'd once loved. (Still loved?)





	1. ONE

_I cannot see the path._   
_**Perhaps there is only abyss**._   
_Trembling, I step forward,_   
_In darkness enveloped._

**—9:38 Dragon—**

Elira Hawke can’t remember how long she’d been searching for comfort in the bottom of a bottle. How many nights had she tried to drown herself in Antivan red? Or Ferelden ale? There are more empty bottles in Hawke manor now than there are full ones. The only thing she knows is that she had yet to find solace in any form, and futilely, she had decided to keep searching.

It had been a year since Kirkwall’s skyline had been reduced to little more than crumbling spires of marble—a year since she had failed the city she had spent so long trying to protect. She had given every part of herself to Kirkwall, and for what? For it to all be undone by the one thing she had foolishly kept for herself? Her mother had always taught her to be selfless, and Hawke had tried her best to live up to Leandra’s expectations of her, but she had sacrificed everything in the name of others. The only thing she had ever wanted in her life had been her downfall, and now she had nothing but thin, pale scars that criss-cross her skin as a painful reminder of all that she had lost.

She wrinkles her nose as she takes a swig of what the seedy Ferelden tavern in which she had found herself dares to call ale. When is the last time she’d been in Ferelden? It must have been an age ago. She recognises little of the country she’d grown up, the country all but unrecognisable after the years spent rebuilding all that the Blight had destroyed. She’d never thought of Kirkwall as her home, not really, but now that she is back in Ferelden, she can’t help but thank that perhaps that had changed.

There isn’t anything left for her in Kirkwall though. Not anymore. Her friends had scattered to the far reaches of Thedas, or are otherwise preoccupied with their own lives, and Hawke manor is emptier than it has ever been. Perhaps that’s not quite true. There is one thing left in Kirkwall, and it’s the one thing she cannot have. All white hair, dark skin, and olive eyes that remind her of everything she had walked away from.

It’s his fault, really, she thinks. It’s his fault that he’d always thought that he’d never be enough for her. He had been enough. They had almost been enough.

But then she had fallen in love with someone else.

Hawke finishes the last of the swill, grimacing at its sour aftertaste. Even if Ferelden isn’t home anymore, it’s better than Kirkwall, though she couldn’t imagine it could be much worse. Her feet had led her here in some desperate attempt to flee the life she had become accustomed to. Not that it had worked. She’s drunk enough that the world’s starting to spin, but not drunk enough that she can forget the _real_ reason she’s drinking in the first place.

Images of brown eyes and golden hair flash through her mind, accompanied by shoulders capped by black feathers, glittering green under the light of the midday sun, and the soft touch of hands as they skimmed over her flesh, knitting back together wounds she had inflicted upon herself.

She doesn’t care that the barkeep is overcharging her for the ale—a whole three silvers, _really_? At this rate, she’ll be broke long before she’s blackout drunk—nor does she care that it tastes like piss, she still flags him down to refill her tankard. Just before she manages to get out her coin purse, however, a rather burly Ferelden soldiers sidles up alongside her, slapping ten silvers down on the counter.

She’s still perched on the edge of the barstool, but she knows he’d tower over her were she standing, with shoulders twice as broad as her own. The Theirin crest is emblazoned on the front of his chest piece, and engraved into his pauldrons too. He carries marks of his journeys, stories written in silver scars on his skin. He’s not exactly _not_ handsome, but she still does not like the look in his dark eyes, like she’s nothing more than his next meal.

“I’ve got this covered, sweetheart. Ale for her, whiskey for me.” He shoots a wink at her, leaning against the counter of the bar, watching in silence as Hawke downs nearly half of the rancid ale in one gulp, toying with his glass of whiskey. “Goin’ to give me your name, love?”

“No,” she says simply, cutting straight to the point, and refusing to look his way. She had become used to receiving unwanted attention in Kirkwall, hardly able to step out the door of her own home without being recognised by one person or another. Half of them praised her too, which made it worse. How many of them had lost loved ones because of what she had done? How many children and parents and siblings and friends are dead because of her? The other half just want to get an eyeful of the infamous Champion of Kirkwall for their own personal reasons. In taverns as seedy as this, it usually wasn’t to give her a piece of their mind.

She can ignore those ones though. She’d take leering smiles or thrown insults over praise any day. She deserves their anger, and she’s nothing but uninterested in those that proposition her. She doesn’t deserve their gratitude, or their reverence. She hadn’t been the one to reduce an entire Chantry to ash, but she might as well have been. Maker knows her heart had been in the hands of the one who had lit the match that had ignited the entire mage-templar war.

“Can I at least get a story, then?” The man is undeterred by her clear disregard for his interest in her. “What’s a pretty lass like you doing in a place like this, hm?”

 Hawke inhales through her nose, collecting herself before looking his way. She exhales through gritted teeth. “No. You can’t. I’m drinking, and I’d rather be left alone if you don’t mind.”

He scowled, dropping all pretence of familiarity. “You goin’ to be a frigid bitch even after I bought you a drink?”

“I didn’t ask you to pay,” she snaps, throwing him a sovereign, and turning back to what’s left of her ale. “Here’s your money and then some. Now kindly fuck off and let a girl drink in peace.”

He’s swinging for her head before she even realises it, missing her only by a hair’s breadth, and almost knocking her off the stool. He swings again, glass of whiskey still in hand, but she raises her left arm just in time to block him, the glass shattering against her forearm. She can feel the shards of glass digging into her skin as she lowers her arm, blood first beading from the wounds before trickling down in crimson rivulets.

Hawke’s father had taught her everything she almost everything she knows about magic, with her having picked up only a few tricks during her travels. He had taught her to be cautious, to be careful, and most of all, to never reveal her powers in public. She is, and has always been an apostate. She had spent her entire life hiding what she is from those around her, and yet…

And yet, none of her father’s teachings stick in her alcohol-addled mind. Magic surges within her, igniting as she channels the power of her own blood as she has not done so since the war had started. Before she registers what she’s doing, her fist is glowing in a blood-red haze, and she has thrown the man halfway across the tavern.

He hits the wall with a loud _thump,_ unconscious body collapsing to the floor. He doesn’t stir, blood trickling from his mouth as several teeth are knocked in from the impact.

Oh, Maker, what has she done?

The entire tavern is taciturn, their breaths caught in their throats as they stare at the Champion, all colour drained from their faces. Then, one lone voice, deafeningly loud in the silence— “Maker help us all, she’s a maleficar!”

The quiet breaks, and the tavern clamours to get as far away from her as possible, and she knows without a doubt that those that manage to summon the courage to flee head straight for the local Chantry. There aren’t many templars left, but she knows what will happen if they manage to find out. A year ago, she’d have been tried before the Knight-Commander of the nearest Circle. Her name would’ve allowed her to get away without more than a slap on the wrist no doubt, the words of the Champion of Kirkwall far more believable than the words of some drunkard with no knowledge of magic.

But the Circles are dissolved, and all Knight-Commanders are off fighting a war. If the templars catch her, they will have her head, and she won’t even have time to beg for mercy.

Hawke stumbles off of the barstool, panic and alcohol causing her to sway. She collapses into the arms of a hooded man, half expecting him to shove her off of him, and throw her to the ground. Instead, he hooks an arm beneath hers, helping bear her own weight.

“Hawke.”

Distantly, she recognises the voice, all quiet murmurs like water running over rocks in a stream. The tone is familiar, but the pain, and the anguish is more familiar. It’s what has haunted her dreams for a year now, a cracked and broken voice as he’d stared up into the eyes of the woman he loved. Into the eyes of the woman he’d betrayed.

 _“I’m sorry, El,”_ is all he had said in return, unable to hold her gaze. _“I did what had to.”_

 _“You did what you thought you had to do,”_ she’d said in return. _“But then you’d always cared more about this than you ever did about me, didn’t you?”_

_“Hawke—”_

_“If you come back here again, if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you,”_ she had said, fighting back the hot, angry tears that pricked at her eyes.

Bleary eyed, she tries to look beneath the stranger’s hood, but her head is spinning, and the glass in her arm shifts with every small detail, and she can barely keep herself on her feet let alone try to discern if he is who she thinks he is. “We need to leave. Now,” he says, almost dragging her out the back door of the tavern, Hawke stumbling along as he forces her into a sprint.

She’s vaguely aware of him trying to lead her towards the edge of the woods, hoping to lose the templars which are undoubtedly on their way in the wilds. “It’s no use,” she groans, ready to retch, and collapse in the dirt. “Let them have me.”

“Is this how the Champion of Kirkwall dies? Alone, in Ferelden countryside, outed as a blood mage?”

His words appeal to her stubborn, petty side, and she finds herself being dragged along even further until at last the sky above her head is blotted out by a thick canopy of leaves. She breaks free from her saviour’s grip, leaning against a nearby tree as she fights the urge to be sick.

“It’s not much further now. _Please_. I can’t lose you. Not like this. Not now.” He flits to her side, and in the dark shadows beneath his hood, catching her in his arms just as her dizziness overtakes her.

She wakes to the sound of a fire crackling in the hearth, and wind whistling as it passes through trees. The scent of elfroot fills her nose, so heady she can almost taste it on her tongue, sharp and bitter and cutting through the bitter iron of blood. Every part of her is sore, her very bones aching, but the glass shards had been removed from her arm, wrapped up in tight cloth bandages. She had been stripped of her clothes as she’d slept, wearing little more than her undergarments and an oversized men’s cotton tunic.

There isn’t much space in the one room cabin, most of it occupied by the bed upon which she lays, and a small table with a chair, its surface covered in bloodied bandages, and all manner of herbs. More herbs hang in bundles from the ceiling, drying. Several magical tomes are stacked precariously on the mantle of the fireplace, teetering on the edge, and little more than a hair’s breadth from falling.

She swings her feet out from beneath the furs that lay atop the bed, only to find herself stepping onto an unmade bedroll, presumably belonging to the inhabitant of the cabin who’d refused to sleep alongside her.

“You’re awake.” She’d thought she’d imagined it last night in a drunken stupor, afraid of what it would mean if her suspicions were true. Now that they’ve been confirmed, she’s paralyzed, silent and still as she stares, wide-eyed and slack jawed. She’d dreamt of this every night for a year. She’s had time to consider her words, time to think of what she would say if she had the opportunity she has now.

He’s just… standing there, as still as he is, staff in one hand, and a basket of elfroot in the other. His hair is still as golden as it has always been, and he’s still wearing the stupid feather mantle around his shoulders. Her heart aches just seeing him, remembering all the time they had shared. Quiet nights spent sitting by the fire, her head leaning against his shoulder, as he told her stories of his time in the Wardens. Drinks at the Hanged Man, laughing as Aveline and Isabela bicker, and secretly holding each other’s hands beneath the table.

And it, like the Chantry, had all gone up in flames because of him.

“Anders.” His name alone is enough to make her heart break all over again. How many months has it been since she’d last said his name?

“It’s been a long time, Elira.” She hates how familiar his voice is, hates how much just hearing it makes her want to forgive him. It’s the same voice that had told her that he’d loved her. But it’s also the same voice that had spoken lies directly to her face, stringing her along in a plan he had known she would not want to be a part of.

She holds back tears, choking on the air in her throat as he sets the basket down on the chair, unable to meet her gaze. “I… I thought it was you last night. I thought I had dreamt you.” He says nothing, tying the elfroot into bundles that he can hang from the ceiling. “ _Anders_.”

He only looks at her as he finishes securing the elfroot. “Are you here to kill me?”

The question takes her by surprise. “I… No. No, I’m not.”

“Then why are you here?” She cannot stand the way the venom in his tone makes her grimace. He has no right, no right at all, in being so accusatory as though she is the one who must answer for her actions, and not him.

“Why are you?” she returns, trying to get to her feet only for pain to shoot through her leg.

Anders flits to her side immediately, discarding his animosity as he helps sit back on the bed. “You hurt your leg when you fell. I did my best to heal it but…” He grits his teeth, looking down at the bandages wrapping her left leg, only pretending to check if she’s reopened her wound. “I’m not as strong as I once was.”

She can sense his magic if she concentrates, but beyond that… Nothing. Emptiness, where there had once been a fire that had burned white hot. “Anders…” She inclines her head, looking down at the man she had once loved. “Where is Justice?”

He swallows. “It’s… complicated. More than it even was before.”

She doesn’t dare press him any further.

“I’m here because there is nothing left for me in Kirkwall,” she says after a long silence, Anders still inspecting her leg as though there is anything else he can do to speed up the healing process. “I thought Ferelden would be better, but it wasn’t until I arrived that I realised that it is not Kirkwall that I have been running from. I wish I would have realised that sooner. I’d have saved a lot of money, and ale is much cheaper in Kirkwall.”

Anders steps away from her, hands curled in fists by his side. “Is that what you’ve spent this past year doing? Getting drunk in taverns?”

“And almost getting myself killed by templars, apparently,” she mutters under her breath.

“You should have been more careful,” he says, his back to her as he stares into the burning hearth.

“It was not my intention to out myself as a blood mage,” she snaps at him. “Not that it’s your place to pass judgement seeing you’ve committed far greater crimes than I, but last night was the first time I’ve used blood magic in a year. First time I’ve—” _First time I’ve managed to use magic in a year, without the spell fizzling out before I can cast it_. Hawke doesn’t finish her sentence, grinding her teeth. Is she even a mage anymore, really? She can barely light an oven using magic anymore without panic overcoming her, sending her heart racing as though she has an entire legion of templars on her heels.

“You’re right,” he murmurs. “It is not my place to pass judgement.”

“On that much at least we agree.”

“ _El_.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps with enough anger that he glances back over his shoulder at her before looking back to the fire. “You don’t get to call me that. We’re not friends anymore, Anders. Not after what you’ve done.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just… Maker, I thought I’d never see you again. It was hard enough trying to move on when you were an ocean away, but now…” He shakes his head. “Forget I said anything. You will have to stay here until the templars have forgotten about you. This cabin is hidden, and warded to boot. You will be safe here, and without anyone in the tavern knowing your name, they’ll have moved on by week’s end. I imagine you will want to stay and rest anyhow. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

She can’t decide if she prefers a cold, clinical Anders whose only concern is her recovery, or if she’d rather have the Anders who can’t bear to look her in the eyes lest he be overcome with shame and remorse for what he’d done. To Kirkwall. To her. To _them._

“Is that it?” She can’t help her anger, igniting inside her heart like a spark lighting tinder. “Is that all you’re going to say to me? After everything? ‘Hi, Elira, it’s been a year. I’m not going to apologise for what I did, but I’d just like to remind you that as a maleficar, you now have templars on your heels, so I guess you’re stuck with me for the rest of the week!’” Her words drip with derision, a year’s worth of pent of fury unleashing itself upon him. “Turn around and look at me, you coward! Say something!”

To her surprise, he does, the brown eyes she’d fallen in love with meeting her own blue ones. “You cut your hair.”

His words catch her off guard, and she finds her anger dissipating for one split second as a disbelieved laugh escapes from her lips. He isn’t wrong. He’d always liked her hair long, and braiding it every morning had been a way of remembering Bethany somehow, but then Bethany had died, and Anders had left.

And she had cut her hair.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

“I told you I would break your heart.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it,” she growls. “I’ve dealt with loss. My father. Bethany. My mother. Maker, I’ve even lost Carver to the Wardens. Compared to that, you are nothing but one rough wave while I’m stuck at sea in the middle of a storm.”

“There is nothing else I can say, El.” She can’t bring herself to correct his usage of the nickname she’d given him permission to use what feels like an age ago. He’s the only one she’d let herself be truly comfortable around, the only one she’d let call her by her father’s old nickname for her. To everyone else, she’d always been Hawke. Champion. Elira. Or Waffles, but that had always been exclusive to Varric.

“An explanation is nothing but deserved,” she says, getting to her feet once again only to stumble into Anders as agony shoots up her leg.

“Make’s sake, woman,” he hisses, lifting her back to the bed. She groans, her leg throbbing in pain that only subsides as he holds his hand over her bandages, a healing light emanating from his palm. “If you stand again, you’re responsible for stitching yourself back up next time you get hurt.”

“Next time…” she repeats quietly, more to herself than to him, as she leans back on the pillows. There isn’t going to be a next time, and they both know it. This meeting had been a rare exception, and one that should not have occurred. Once the templars have forgotten about her, they will go their separate ways, no doubt never to see each other again.

She doesn’t realise she’s crying until the front of her shirt is damp with tears. “I should hate you,” she manages to say. “I thought I would. Every time I thought about you, about us, I always hated you, but now that you’re here… Now that you’re here I know that that isn’t true. I… I shouldn’t have sent you away.”

“You do not need to explain yourself,” he says, hand resting on her leg, coaxing his healing magic into her with a gentle touch. “You are the Champion of Kirkwall. How could you have faced the city you have sworn to protect with me by your side?”

“Who would have stopped me?”

“I would have,” he says quietly. “You’ve always deserved more than what I could have ever given to you.”

“No,” she says, “I don’t think you could have. Look at where we are now. You killed the Grand Cleric and a hundred more innocents. You started the war that now rages across all of southern Thedas. And yet…”

“I know,” he says, closing his eyes. “I knew saving you would make this so much harder, but I couldn’t… I couldn’t watch you get taken away. Even if you are… _were_ a blood mage, you never hurt anyone but yourself, and to die for defending yourself by any means necessary? It was selfish of me, but I couldn’t lose you. Not again.” He gets to his feet, starting towards the door. “You are welcome to stay as long as you need to, but I will be gone by month’s end.”

“Why?”

“I am… needed elsewhere. I wish I could tell you more, but I swore to her I would remain silent. It would put her in danger if anyone knew, and I cannot lose her friendship as I have lost yours.” Anders grabs a cloak from a hook by the door, wrapping it around his shoulders. “There are crutches beneath the bed if you have the strength to use them. I will try to find us something to eat.”

Hawke doesn’t move from the bed even as he leaves, closing the door behind him. She buries her head in the pillow that smells of the bergamot she had come to associate with him, and the strange, cinnamon-scented soap he always used to make. Conflict rages within her, two different sides warring with each other. She wants to hate him. She _should_ hate him. But she can’t, and she doesn’t. She had tried to forget about him multiple times, tried to forget about the times when everything had been perfect, losing herself in another in a desperate attempt to move on but…

It hadn’t worked. None of it had worked.

And distantly, she remembers Fenris, standing from afar with a broken heart as he’d sacrificed what they’d had for her own good, only for his decision to end up breaking her as she’d fallen in love with another. He’d always stood by her side, through thick and thin, even when they had spent hours screaming at each other from opposite sides of Hawke’s study about mages’ right to be free.

She remembers bedding him at midnight, the fire in her hearth extinguished as so she could not see his features, with her pretending that he was someone else, and with him pretending that she still loved him. She remembers drunken nights spent on the floor, curled up against the nearest wall, and waking to a blanket covering her, and a pillow beneath her head with Fenris asleep in a chair nearby.

She’d always deserved better than Anders, but Fenris had always deserved better than her.

But all of them, Anders included, deserve to be happy, and none of them are.

Anders returns several hours later, the fireplace long since burnt out with a rabbit he’d managed to slay in hand. “Are you awake?” he whispers in the darkened cabin, unable to tell if Hawke is simply resting, or if she’d fallen asleep in his bed, her face pressed into his pillow.

She is, and still she says nothing, keeping her eyes scrunched tight as he sits on the bed alongside her, the mattress sinking beneath their shared weight. He brushes a lock of ink-black hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear.

“I’m so sorry.” He speaks in a cracked whisper, but his voice is deafening in the silence. Even the wind outside has ceased howling, as though the entire world has stopped around them. “I… I should have been nobler,” he continues. “I shouldn’t have let you fall in love with me, but I… I can’t help loving you, even if you will never forgive me.”

She feels him stand, quietly tying up the rabbit from the ceiling where the mice can’t get it, before retiring himself, lighting a small fire in the hearth to keep them both warm throughout the night. She waits until he is asleep, his breaths slow and laboured, before she turns over onto her other side, looking down at his sleeping form on the floor. Hesitantly, she reaches her fingers out, running them through his shoulder-length golden hair. He stirs, but does not wake, instinctively pressing himself into her touch.

Immediately, she pulls her hand away, cradling it to her chest as though she had been burned, and perhaps she has. The mere touch of him reignites something within her, something that had lain dormant for a year. She wants to call it desire, wants to say that she knows the touch of him far too well to not hunger for it after a year apart, but she knows desire. She knows how easily the lines can blur between lust and love, but even then… Even then she knows that this—

This is something else.

 _No,_ she thinks to herself. _You cannot let yourself fall in love with him again._

But it’s already far too late for such warnings.


	2. TWO

The next three days pass in silence, Anders only speaking when absolutely necessary, but even then, his words are limited to polite formalities, and regular updates on her health. She cannot say with absolute certainty that this distance between them is any better than the casual familiarity that she’d almost found herself slipping into.

She’d always hated that about him.

With Anders, everything was easier, somehow. It’s as though compared to the war they had both been fighting, him with violence and her with words, no struggles the world could throw at them could compare. It had never been the same with Fenris. She had loved him, and she had loved him deeply, but it had been all to easy for the lines between passion and hatred to blur.

It had almost been a relief when Fenris had walked away, but Anders walking away…

_Sending_ Anders away had almost broken her, made worse by the fact that she’d known she ought to have dragged a knife across his throat as recompense for his actions. He had deserved worse than exile. Still deserved worse than exile, but…

Hawke’s gaze drifts to him as he sits on the before the fire, bedroll dragged closer to provide him something to sit on. His golden hair is falling out of its ties, stray locks draping across face as he pours over a book, doing everything in his power to avoid speaking to her. In another life, this cabin would be theirs, and she’d wake up every morning with him by her side. In another life, they could have been happy.

In another life.

Just not this one.

Her limbs are still heavy, and her bones seem to creak with every movement, but somehow she manages to get to her feet, closing the distance between them. He barely looks her way as she sits down alongside him.

“What happened to getting a cat when you got your own place?” Her voice is hoarse, cracking on every syllable she utters but still, he smiles, and none of it matters.

“Did I say that?” he says, eyes still on the pages of his book.

“Mm. Shortly after we first met, and you were complaining about the Wardens taking Ser Pounce-a-lot away from you.”

A breathy laugh bubbles from his lips, dying as soon as he realises that it had escaped from him. “A foolish notion. I moved in with you not long after, remember? Garahel would have eaten any cat I got.”

“Just because you didn’t like my dog doesn’t mean you have to insult him,” she shoots back in return, far too joking for the position in which they have found themselves. Like him with his laughter, she abruptly supresses her humour, quashing it deep down inside where it will never see the light of day.

“Where is that dreaded beast anyhow?”

“Carver took him with him when he returned to the Wardens,” Hawke says, looking down at her hands. “I… didn’t have many opportunities or reasons to leave my house after you left. It wasn’t fair to him. Mabari need to go outside on a regular basis or they’ll go stir crazy. Aveline stopped by from time to time, using him to help train the men, and Merrill tried to walk him once but… Garahel’s nearly the same size as her, and it… didn’t work out for either. Besides, I think Carver needed someone to keep him in line.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Who did you have to keep you in line?” Anders looks up at her from beneath stray strands of hair. “As I recall, you got up to more trouble than your brother ever did.”

“Fenris… came by every so often,” she admits after a moment’s pause. She doesn’t know how she can put her thoughts into words. He had been the one to hold her during the nights she woke from her dreams in a fit of terror, murmuring Tevene into her ear as he hushed her back to sleep. He had come by with food every week, ensuring that she didn’t starve as she locked herself up in her manor. She had never deserved him, and she never would.

Anders’ expression sours.

“What?” Hawke demands. “You aren’t still bitter about him, are you?”

“I… No.” She knows him well enough to know that he’s lying. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“I don’t love him, Anders.” Hawke pulls her knees up into her chest, watching the fire as it burns. A log lets out a crack, and splits in two. “It’s complicated.”

“But you did love him. Once.”

“Nearly half a decade ago, _yes_. What, do I have to love someone now to bed them? Forgive me, I shall be needing to be notifying Cullen then.” She hadn’t meant to say any of that, but the words had slipped from her mouth before she could catch them in her hands and force her anger back deep down inside. She grimaces. “Shit.”

“Cullen? _Knight-Captain_ Cullen?” Anders hisses through gritted teeth, tossing his book halfway across the room. She half expects Justice to come out as she had become used to, a blue-white shimmer appearing across his skin, and his eyes glowing from within with the light of the Fade. And yet, nothing happens. Instead, Anders curls his hands into fists, barely containing his fury. “You slept not only with a templar, but Meredith’s second? How many mages have been turned Tranquil by his hands? How many more mages has he killed?”

“He is a good man, and how _dare_ you judge him for killing innocents when you slaughtered a hundred in one night!” she snarls from the ground as he gets to his feet, pacing before the fire as he tries to avoid looking at her.

“You don’t think I hate myself for the same reasons I hate people like him?” he snaps.

“Oh, I think you hate yourself, but you are in no position to hate others, Anders.” Hawke can’t keep the derision out of her voice. “He treated me like a person when few others did, his disdain for mages aside. He was the only person, besides Fenris, who never thanked me or treated me like a hero after I defeated Meredith. And again: who are you to judge? I have been on my own for a _year_. My sister, father, and mother are dead. My brother is with the Wardens. Isabela and Varric are off with the King of Ferelden doing Maker-knows-what. Merrill has the Alienage’s people to worry about, and Aveline’s busy picking up the pieces of the mess _you_ left behind. Hate Cullen and Fenris if you will, but how _dare_ you hate me? Do I not deserve to be happy? Not even a little?”

“Elira—”

“If it’s any consolation, I wished they were you every time.” She’s crying again, and Maker damn it all. Hasn’t she cried enough since she’d first left Lothering eight years ago? Loss is her most intimate friend. But even then, Anders had always had a way of seeing through her like nobody else ever could. He could take her apart with just one look, and she’d always hated him for it. “I always wished that they could have been you, but I couldn’t… You blew up the _Chantry_ , Anders. I am… was… I don’t know, but the Champion of Kirkwall couldn’t be seen with the man who’d felled Kirkwall in one blow.”

“You always were concerned about how the Kirkwall nobility saw you.”

“Yes, because with their help, perhaps you wouldn’t have needed to blow up the Chantry,” she snarls. “Meredith was insane, but even she couldn’t deny the entire nobility if they rose against her. They funded her, and without them, she’d have fallen.”

“This couldn’t have ever ended in anything but blood, Elira.”

“Yes! It could have! You were just so blinded by your rage, so blinded by Justice that you could never see outside of your narrow view of the world. I wanted to see mages free just as much as you did, but the way you achieved that? I couldn’t stand by you, Anders. I couldn’t say that we stood for the same thing. Do you think I _wanted_ to send you away? They would have killed you if you had stayed, and I would have done everything in my power to stop him. It would have made me just as corrupt as Meredith, exploiting my status to get what I wanted.”

She’s on her feet now, her leg screaming at her to brace herself against something, but she can barely feel the pain over the pounding of her heart in her chest, and the rage that he had reignited within her.  She stares at the back of Anders’ head, nails digging into her palms, and leaving behind small, crescent-shaped bruises.

“There was never anyone else for me but you,” she whispers. “It was always you, and it will always be you, but I have a duty to Kirkwall’s people. I couldn’t love the man that had caused them so much suffering, even if I wanted to. Even if I still want to.”

Anders turned on his heel, eyes meeting hers. He looks wearier than he ever has, the years taking just as much of a toll on him as they have on her. There are wrinkles marring his skin that had not been there a year ago, a deep line between his brow from constant tension and stress. “Still want to?” he repeats in a low, hoarse voice.

“You’d have to be a fool, Anders, to think that I ever stopped loving you,” she replies, shoulders sagging as he steps closer towards her. “I will never be able to forget about you, about us. Don’t you know that?”

“Even after all I’ve done?” he says. “Even after everything?”

“I will never be able to forgive you, but I do not have to forgive you to love you.”

She doesn’t really know how it happens. He moves in a blur far too quick for her to see, but suddenly, his lips are crashing against her, and it’s like she’s come home.


End file.
